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I've noticed that on some airlines (I may have seen it on SAS) the cabin crew had a small touchscreen at the front of the plane which they were using to select recorded audio messages etc, in both their language, and English.

Searching the internet, I found out it's called a Flight Attendant Panel — here are some photos I found:

So I gather they can control the lighting, and movies; but what else can these panels do?

I also found a FAP trainer, which says:

This virtual training environment generates a realistic FAP representation including OBRM, CAM and PRAM

What are OBRM, CAM and PRAM? What is being displayed above?

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    $\begingroup$ You posted this just to put those tags together. $\endgroup$ – casey Mar 25 '14 at 15:01
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    $\begingroup$ I've seen this display too, at the rear kitchen area on a 777. One of flight attendants checked how full trash cans were in lavatories (aren't those trash cans high-tech), and also the seat numbers which pressed the call button. $\endgroup$ – Farhan♦ Mar 25 '14 at 16:03
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    $\begingroup$ I might be childish, but I lost it at "FAP trainer" :) $\endgroup$ – Speldosa Mar 30 '14 at 20:25
  • $\begingroup$ @Speldosa It was more the fact that they could play audio recordings in English and Norwegian. $\endgroup$ – Danny Beckett Mar 30 '14 at 20:37
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    $\begingroup$ @DannyBeckett Please try to bear in mind that, for more than 95% of the world's population, Delta is "a foreign airline". It just isn't useful to describe something as "foreign" in a forum where there are people from many countries. Since the nationality of the airline isn't at all relevant to your question, why mention it at all? $\endgroup$ – David Richerby Apr 9 '14 at 18:32
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Here is an interesting presentation that discusses most of the communications systems on the A320 family (looks like the pictures you have and should apply in general). The CIDS (cabin intercommunication data system) starts about halfway through on page 21. The FAP is part of this system and can control:

  • Passenger reading lights
  • Passenger call buttons
  • Cabin lighting controls
  • Cabin system monitoring/testing
  • Passenger entertainment system
  • Passenger address (PA)
  • Automatic announcement and boarding music
  • Cabin/Service interphone and calls
  • EVAC signal
  • Emergency light
  • Door bottle pressure monitoring (either oxygen or escape slide?)
  • Door proximity sensors (doors closed properly)
  • Smoke detection
  • Water and waste tank quantities

The acronyms you listed are:

  • Cabin Assignment Module (CAM)
    • All the software for specific customer layouts and defined parameters in the FAP (same as OBRP).
  • On Board Replaceable Module (OBRM)
    • This is a generic term for any module that is easily replaceable. In this case it refers to the module that contains all the information used by the FAP (same as CAM).
  • Prerecorded Announcement and Music (PRAM)

A good list of Airbus acronyms including these can be found here.

enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ seem to be russian and there doesn't seem to be a .pdf anywhere but still thank you. $\endgroup$ – shirish Dec 13 '18 at 14:05
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The OBRM, PRAM, CAM are three memory cards, which hold aircraft related data and softwares and plugged into the FAP at botton. (You can see three slots). The page shown in the picture is cabin status page, which is showing current status of aircraft namely Music, Lights, Doors, temeperature and lavatories.

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In simpler times the panel didn't do much at all.

enter image description here

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    $\begingroup$ this should have been a comment. $\endgroup$ – Federico♦ Apr 7 '17 at 19:21

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